Mental ill-health and ‘warped’ notions of masculinity among reasons mooted for rise of nearly 50% in a year
There is growing alarm in Kenya over a shocking rise in the number of suicides in the country.
Almost 500 people are reported to have killed themselves in the three months to June this year, more than the whole of 2020, according to the Kenyan police.
Continue reading...Pressure on undertakers leads to widespread delays after record number of coronavirus infections and deaths last month
A group of women sing hymns at the cemetery in Harare as undertakers, dressed in Covid-19 protective gear, gently lower a white casket into the grave.
“This world is not our home,” they sing, as relatives, standing a few metres away, mourn their loss.
Continue reading...Schools in north of country have become prime targets for ‘bandits’ with 1,000 students taken this year
More than 200 schoolchildren remain abducted by armed “bandit” groups in northern Nigeria, among more than 1,000 students taken this year as schools in northern Nigeria have become prime targets.
A startling absence of security and – according to many communities – a reluctance to meaningfully engage armed threats have rapidly turned much of northern Nigeria into a haven for kidnap gangs and a hell for thousands of families. Many of the victims are schoolchildren, with several mass kidnappings this year, mirroring and eclipsing the kidnap of almost 300 Chibok schoolgirls by Boko Haram in 2014.
Continue reading...Ebola-like disease kills man in Guinea as WHO says it is working with local health authorities on swift response to stop spread
Health authorities in Guinea have confirmed one death from Marburg virus, a highly infectious haemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola, the World Health Organization says.
It marks the first time that the deadly disease has been identified in west Africa.
Continue reading...Militants attacked three villages near Niger border in latest in wave of civilian massacres in Sahel region
More than 51 people have been killed in northern Mali by jihadists, who attacked three villages near the border with Niger, killing and torching homes, in the latest mass attack in a region beset by violence.
Militants on motorbikes overwhelmed the villages simultaneously on Sunday evening, entering and killing indiscriminately and burning and ransacking homes, according to security officials.
Continue reading...One of the few neurosurgeons in the country, Mukasa declined lucrative opportunities to work overseas, dedicating himself to training a new generation and going the ‘extra mile’ for patients
Kennedy Owuor first fell over in his hotel room in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, before headaches followed. He initially brushed the symptoms off as a minor problem, but soon he started having difficulties speaking and moving.
A trip in August 2020 to northern Uganda, as part of his duties working for the UN’s food agency, had to be interrupted. He was instead driven for 12 hours to UMC Victoria hospital in Kampala.
Continue reading...Death of Memory Machaya, 14, who gave birth at church shrine, prompts outrage among citizens and activists
The United Nations has condemned the practice of child marriage in Zimbabwe following the death of a 14-year-old girl after she gave birth at a church shrine, an incident that caused outrage among citizens and rights activists.
The case has brought to the fore the practice of child marriage within Zimbabwe’s apostolic churches, which also allow polygamy.
Continue reading...Every year thousands of refugees from conflict, climate and instability in Africa board vessels in search of a new life in Europe but hundreds never arrive
At 6.30am on Friday 28 May, three fishermen at work four miles off the southern coast of Tobago spotted a large white boat adrift on the dawn waters of the Caribbean.
As they drew closer, the trio saw the boat’s shape was far from local, and noticed a strong smell coming from inside it. The body the fishermen glimpsed at the bow was enough to confirm their suspicions. They called the coastguard who, unable to dispatch a vessel, asked them to tow the boat ashore at Belle Garden beach.
Continue reading...Government says it will ‘deploy entire defensive capability’ and Amhara region threatens attack against Tigray forces
Ethiopia’s spreading conflict has escalated after the government warned that it could deploy its “entire defensive capability” against the restive Tigray region after advances by rebels into neighbouring regions.
After the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) rebuffed calls on Friday to withdraw from the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions, the government in Addis Ababa said the rebels were testing its patience and threatening the ceasefire called in June.
Continue reading...Tabitha Chawinga, a Malawi international who plays in China, has called for greater safeguards against abuse in her home country
The international footballer Tabitha Chawinga is calling on Malawi’s football authorities to introduce safeguards to protect women from abuse at all levels of the game.
Chawinga, who became the first woman from Malawi to sign for a European football team when she joined the Swedish club Krokom/Dvärsätts IF in 2014, said that she had been forced to strip in public during a match to prove she was female and was regularly trolled on social media about her looks.
Continue reading...Médecins Sans Frontières and Norwegian Refugee Council, active in war-torn Tigray, in talks over ban
The Ethiopian government has suspended the work of two international aid organisations for three months, including in the conflict-hit Tigray region, accusing them of spreading misinformation.
Ethiopia Current Issues Fact Check, a government-run website focused on Tigray, accused Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) of violating several rules.
Continue reading...Acquittal comes after attorney general said evidence insufficient to prosecute for unlawful assembly
A Ghanaian court has acquitted and freed 21 people who were arrested during a crackdown on homosexuality in May for attending an LGBTQ+ event.
Gay sex is a criminal offence in the west African country and members of the LGBTQ+ community often face discrimination.
Continue reading...While Saied’s shutdown of parliament has outsiders worried, in Tunisia he has 87% support and civil society remains strong
Outside Tunisia, the president’s sacking of the prime minister and shutdown of parliament looked like a coup. Inside, however, activists and journalists are still struggling to define what is happening to their country – and what to do about it.
“The day after the president acted, we had a conversation in the newsroom about whether it was a coup,” said Thameur Mekki, the editor-in-chief of the influential media platform Nawaat. Other news outlets aired programmes debating the “coup” question, and activist groups started worrying. But then, said Mekki, the president, Kais Saied, personally called leading civil society groups and “gave assurances about their freedom to operate”.
Continue reading...Mutant strain may emerge amid vaccine hesitancy, experts say, as even medics reject jabs in DR Congo
Dr Christian Mayala and Dr Rodin Nzembuni Nduku sit together on a bench outside the Covid ward at Kinshasa’s Mama Yemo hospital.
They are discussing the health of their father, Noel Kalouda, who contracted coronavirus weeks before, and is now lying in a hospital bed, breathing through an oxygen mask.
Continue reading...Dr Peninah Murage says the unjust traffic light system penalises poor countries even though some have relatively low numbers of cases. Plus Dot Mornington-West on being under house arrest after returning from France
Can the Guardian please investigate the rationale behind the Covid travel restrictions relating to “red list” countries? Some of the countries on the red list, such as Kenya, have very low Covid cases and deaths, but are among the world’s poorest and with little influence on government policy.
Essentially, the UK government is using this list to appease the public who need to see the government doing something – but at the same time the government is assured that the backlash will be minimal because these countries have very little voice.
Continue reading...Two clans brutally evicted to make way for tea plantations owned by white settlers are seeking reparations for rights violations
The British government has been criticised by the UN for a lack of resolution over colonial-era crimes committed in Kenya.
Six UN special rapporteurs have written to the government expressing concern over its failure to provide “effective remedies and reparations” to the Kipsigis and Talai peoples.
Continue reading...The World Bank and IMF should step in to finance a recovery of children’s learning chances devastated by the pandemic
“Education,” wrote Nelson Mandela, “is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” One wonders what he would have made of the response to the education crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. A crisis threatening to derail social and economic progress, trapping millions of children in poverty. The UN secretary general has warned of a “generational catastrophe”, yet the international response has been marked by staggering complacency.
That lack of concern was on public display at last week’s Global Education Summit in London. Fresh from cutting UK aid to education by 40%, Boris Johnson – a self-styled champion for universal girls’ education – opened proceedings by declaring that education was “the single best investment we can make in the future of humanity”.
Continue reading...Kidnapped by Lord’s Resistance Army rebels as a girl, Victoria Nyanjura has pushed through major reforms for victims of abduction and rape
When Victoria Nyanjura was abducted from her Catholic boarding school in northern Uganda by members of the Lord’s Resistance Army, she prayed to God asking to die.
She was 14 when she was taken, along with 29 others, in the middle of the night. During the next eight years in captivity she was subjected to beatings, starvation, rape and other horrors that she cannot talk about even 18 years later. Five of the girls who were taken prisoner with her died, and Nyanjura gave birth to two children.
Continue reading...The increasingly draconian approach to irregular migration betrays the spirit of the 1951 refugee convention
Seventy years ago, the 1951 UN refugee convention established the rights of refugees to seek sanctuary, and the obligations of states to protect them. Increasingly, it seems that much of Europe is choosing to commemorate the anniversary by ripping up some of the convention’s core principles.
So far this year, close to 1,000 migrants have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean, more than four times the death toll for the same period in 2020. Many will have been economic migrants. Others will have been fleeing persecution. Increasingly, Europe does not care. All were “irregular”. And all must be discouraged and deterred through a strategy of cruelty.
Continue reading...As leaders around the world grapple with cryptocurrencies, what happened when the African country tried to ban them?
When the Nigerian government suddenly banned access to foreign exchange for textile import companies in March 2019, Moses Awa* felt stuck. His business – importing woven shoes from Guangzhou, China, to sell in the northern city of Kano and his home state of Abia, further south – had been suffering along with the country’s economy. The ban threatened to tip it over the edge. “It was a serious crisis: I had to act fast,” Awa says.
He turned to his younger brother, Osy, who had begun trading bitcoins. “He was just accumulating, accumulating crypto, saying that at some point years down the line it could be a great investment. When the forex ban happened, he showed me how much I needed it, too. I could pay my suppliers in bitcoins if they accepted – and they did.”
Continue reading...